Vacation rental marketplace HomeToGo is targeting booking revenue of €1 billion by 2029.
Releasing its fourth quarter and full-year 2022 earnings, the company says revenue increased 55% to €147 million year over year while booking revenue increased by almost one-third to €164 million versus 2021.
Adjusted EBITDA for 2022 was a loss of €21 million, and the company continues to target EBITDA break-even in 2023 and has provided revenue guidance of between €165 million and €175 million.
Highlights of the year for HomeToGo included the acquisition of AMIVAC in January and E-Domizil in March and acquiring the remaining 81% stake in Secra in June following its initial acquisition of 19% in 2021.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, HomeToGo increased booking revenues by 36% to €31 million and increased revenue for subscriptions and services business unit, where it sees further opportunity, 178% to €7 million.
Patrick Andrae, co-founder and CEO of HomeToGo, said: "2022 proved that vacation rentals remain one of the fastest growing and resilient travel verticals. Despite the global macroeconomic uncertainty, we managed to deliver another very strong performance, laying foundations for further progress in scaling HomeToGo to become a fast growth and profitable travel technology platform."
Speaking to PhocusWire, chief financial officer Steffen Schneider said that while there are macroeconomic pressures and challenges, "all in all, it's going really well" for the company.
"In the first quarter of 2023, we had a really good start to the year. There are certain countries that used to book early, such as the Germans and the Dutch, and they have done really well this year, but we have also seen quite a lot of early bookers from the U.S."
He added that despite issues highlighted late last year such as the war in Ukraine, fuel price inflation and job cuts, people are still booking holidays.
On the €1 billion booking revenue target, Schneider said:
"We just want to continue in growing our business, and we are well on track to achieve that €1 billion by 2028/2029. We will continue to expand our take rate. We have done really well, our cost per action take rate increased from 8.3% in 2021 to 9.6%. We want to continue to expand our take rate and continue to expand geographically. Our DACH [German, Austrian and Swiss] market is by far the biggest market, and there's no reason the rest of Europe and North America can't have the size of the DACH market."
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He added that HomeToGo also wants to increase its services and subscriptions business by offering more services such as payments as well as targeting smaller partners with its solutions.
In terms of supply growth, the company is focusing on existing regions where it is strong, such as Europe and North America, but inventory in the southern hemisphere would also be of interest.
Further merger and activity could also be on the cards, but Schneider said the company has to be careful about the impact on numbers. For us it's important that if we do [mergers and acquisitions] we want to acquire profitable businesses," he said.
On M&A in the sector more widely, he said prices in 2022 were still high with "a joke last year that sellers were still in 2021 while buyers were already in 2023."
"What we see, particularly when you look at profitable businesses, is that these businesses are doing well and some of the price expectations are quite steep, so we're looking at it but we will not pay any price."